It was strange.
Xin Hexue took another look at the paper doll sitting on Matsukawa’s backpack.
In the past, the halo of “someone else’s good child” had always been placed on Xin Hexue’s head. He had never thought much of it before as talent was inherently unfair.
But now that he was looking at it from another perspective, he felt a subtle sense of displeasure.
Why was Xiao Hei struggling with a simple problem like ten minus eight, while the child next door had already started reading foreign editions on calculus?
Xin Hexue lowered his eyelashes, his eyes cold as he stared at the little paper doll in his hand.
He gave it a pinch, and Xiao Hei let out a “ji” sound.
Perhaps to please its mother, Xiao Hei had raised its body temperature, so its belly was warm and toasty. It even secretly adjusted its own material, creating a plush toy-like texture as you pinch the thin sheet of paper.
“Ji.”
Its shiny beady eyes looked at Xin Hexue.
Xin Hexue could only sigh and hand it a bag of shredded squid snack. “Play by yourself.”
Intelligence is influenced by a large number of genes. Under the condition of polygenic inheritance, the combination of advantageous genes from high-intelligence parents may not be completely passed on to their children. The further the parents’ intelligence deviates from the mean, the greater the potential regression towards the mean for the child.
Therefore, Xiao Hei was just a silly baby whose intelligence had regressed to the mean.
He had to accept that his child was not perfect.
After completing this psychological preparation, Xin Hexue looked back and saw that Xiao Hei didn’t even tear open the food packaging bag. It opened its mouth and swallowed the entire bag of shredded squid whole.
It didn’t even need to chew.
Great, it even solved the problem of plastic waste pollution. What a good child, a true Holy Body of Environmental Protection.
Xin Hexue thought coldly.
Perhaps because the other little paper dolls were eating so deliciously, Xiao Hei stared blankly from the side, its appetite whetted.
“You cannot snatch snacks from other little friends.” Xin Hexue thought for a moment and added, “And you cannot eat other little friends either.”
Zhu Jiyue asked in shock, “Why is your paper doll different from ours? Oh my God, it even has two rows of teeth.”
Xin Hexue also found it very strange, but Xiao Hei indeed had those two rows of uneven shark-like teeth. It was very troublesome to brush the child’s teeth, and Xiao Hei would even swallow the toothpaste foam.
He replied, “It’s probably a gene mutation.”
The grocery store owner didn’t come out no matter how much they called, perhaps dead asleep during his nap. Fortunately, all the products had suggested retail prices, and price tags were posted on the shelves. Everyone settled their bills by placing change under the account book at the front counter.
They left the store and walked on the spacious road. The sunlight was nice, the sea breeze gentle, the green trees rustling. If they hadn’t suddenly encountered these bizarre events, this would indeed be a nice tourist destination.
Xin Hexue slowed down his pace and gradually fell to the rear of the group.
Suddenly, he stopped and turned to look back.
A white porcelain doll stumbled and fell before it had time to hide properly.
Judging by the cracks on its surface, it was the one that had suddenly appeared on the road earlier.
Xin Hexue silently approached it, and soon discovered several white porcelain dolls hiding behind the oyster shell wall. They didn’t expect a human to actively approach them and stood frozen in place, the expressions on their faces blank.
He unzipped his backpack, took out several bags of snacks, and placed them in front of them.
The white porcelain dolls stared at the snacks.
Suddenly, they raised bright smiling faces, matching the weather.
Xin Hexue said nothing, turned, and caught up with the people ahead.
………
It was almost eleven o’clock. No fire had been lit for cooking at the old house yet. Zhou Liao had to go back to prepare lunch, while Xin Hexue and the others would look around the vicinity to see if they could collect any materials related to folk customs.
Before they knew it, they had arrived in front of the ancestral hall. An open space was left in front of the hall, with several racks set up for drying seafood. There was salted ribbon fish, bandfish, and kelp hanging on them.
Matsukawa took a few photos of this area.
What drew their attention more was the group of people gathered in the open space ahead, making Xin Hexue wonder if all the people from those tightly shut households had gathered here.
These people were holding brooms high, some were holding wooden sticks, chanting something fervently and almost deliriously, forcefully beating and chasing towards the center of the crowd.
“What are they doing?” Zhu Jiyue wondered. “Are they putting on this kind of show to hit rats? Is there a rat plague here?”
The words they were chanting came over, and they caught some…
“Will you give birth or not! Will you give birth or not!”
“Perhaps it’s a folk custom ritual.” Matsukawa raised his camera and aimed it in that direction. “It might be the material Teacher Zhang needs.”
Soon, they learned that what was trapped in the center of the crowd was not rats.
Because human cries of pain came from the middle.
This was beating people, to be precise, a group beating.
The brooms raised clouds of dust in the open space. In the camera’s viewfinder, a few women soon emerged from the chaotic crowd. Their hair was disheveled, their backs were hunched, and they fled desperately from the villagers’ beatings.
The villagers, however, continued to chase them relentlessly. The wooden sticks and brooms swung until dust filled the air. The posture of these people clearly showed they were truly beating people, not some custom like using pomelo leaves to swipe away bad luck.
Matsukawa frowned.
These people were driving the women from their own village like rats, and the chants continued: “Will you give birth or not? Will you give birth or not?”
“Will you give birth or not? When will you give birth?”
“Give birth to what? How many?”
The women screamed: “We will give birth! We will give birth!”
“We will give birth to a son! Give birth to countless sons!”
Zhu Jiyue and Xing Ming rushed forward. “What are you doing? Stop it!”
“How can you gang up to beat people in broad daylight…”
“Outsiders?”
The group stopped. Some faces looked familiar; it was the village chief’s son who had eaten with them last night.
Zhu Jiyue also recognized that among the beaten women was the village chief’s daughter-in-law. “You hit your wife? Are you even a man?”
“Little girl, and you boys who still haven’t even grown all your hair, don’t interfere with the customs of Nanwan Village!” the village chief’s son said.
The ones participating in the group beating weren’t just these women’s husbands. There were men and women, including several old women with sparse white hair.
“You young people don’t understand. These are all women in our village who haven’t been able to conceive for years. Why can’t they conceive? They must be possessed by ghosts! We have to be at them! Only sticks can exorcise evil and help them have children!”
“The women in our village aren’t like those precious daughters-in-law you have outside. After coming to the husband’s family door, how can they not spread branches and leaves?”
“Alright, don’t meddle in other people’s business! Here are some peanuts for you, go play!” The village chief’s son, with his beer belly, walked like an inconvenient crab and stuffed a handful of peanuts and dates into each of their hands, implying “bearing sons.” He didn’t forget to call to the villagers, completing the final part of the ritual. While distributing them, he said cheerfully, “It’s settled! It’s settled! Next year I’ll invite you to the full-month banquet!”
Only after the husbands of these women distributed cigarettes and fruits like this did the villagers stop, smiling and congratulating them. “If you still can’t bear a child next year, we’ll beat you again.”
For the students from Beidao University, if they hadn’t come here personally, they’d probably find it hard to imagine that such backward customs still existed. This was a form of punishment tied to reproductive coercion.
They looked at the peanuts and dates in their hands, dumbfounded, their words completely powerless and pale.
“It’s settled, give birth to a son, don’t give me another money-losing girl! The chickens and ducks at home aren’t enough to offer to the Red Prince for praying for sons!”
The village chief’s son pulled his own wife’s sleeve and staggered back, having shown off his power.
Xin Hexue looked up in interest.
Why “another”?
If they had already given birth to a child before, why didn’t they see one at the village chief’s house earlier?
He looked at the village chief’s eldest son’s belly and only found it was swollen like a water-filled balloon.
[Please listen to question 1627: Find the village chief’s eldest granddaughter (0/5 points)]
The game system’s AI was like someone who had eaten poisonous mushrooms, the question numbers were messed up as if it had caught a computer virus.
………
“Kong Yuan is dead.”
When Luo Liangming said these words, his face was pale, and cold sweat kept beading at his temples.
The evening twilight shone into the old house, soaking everything in a fading color.
Teacher Zhang was devastated, and he looked like he had aged twenty years in half a day. He still couldn’t recover. The lenses on his nose bridge were half-shattered; he had dropped them on the ground and accidentally stepped on them while chasing after the student.
The other male student wasn’t much better off.
Luo Liangming had to explain for them: “We ran out of the village to chase Kong Yuan. He was running too fast and no one could catch up. We shouted at him, but he turned a deaf ear and simply wouldn’t stop, just kept running forward.”
“But we soon realized he was on the wrong path. The direction he was going wasn’t the way out of the village.”
Luo Liangming chased after him closely, unable to understand how this person, who hadn’t eaten breakfast, could run forward like a tireless racehorse. Eventually, Teacher Zhang and the other student couldn’t keep up, so they told Luo Liangming to chase first and not mind them.
It was literally like watching a mountain run the horse to death. Luo Liangming didn’t want to mention how his lungs were burning and his legs felt broken from chasing.
Gasping for breath, he shouted loudly: “Kong Yuan! If you keep running, you’ll soon reach the mountain top! Stop running!”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to go back? You’re running the wrong way, you directionless idiot!”
Luo Liangming was almost laughing in anger at this stubborn classmate.
But then, the person running ahead suddenly leaped up…
The end of the mountain path directly swallowed him.
His legs felt like they were filled with lead, and Luo Liangming stopped in shock.
White waves crashed against the hundred-meter-high sea cliff, and seagulls flew past, their cries hoarse in the howling wind.
“Why would he jump off a cliff for no reason?”
Luo Liangming was puzzled no matter how hard he thought.
Teacher Zhang murmured, “We shouldn’t have come… On my way back, I couldn’t find a signal, so I wanted to go to the town to report the case. What if he wasn’t dead… Even if he was dead, the maritime police and lifeboats could still retrieve the body, right?”
“But I kept walking, and walking, and every time I ended up back at the village entrance.”
The mountain path they had taken to get in could no longer be used to leave.
He took off his glasses, and the broken lens fell out of the frame. Teacher Zhang buried his face deeply in his palms.
“The village chief said it’s too late today, he’ll help us look for the person on the other side of the mountain tomorrow.”
In fact, they all knew this was an excuse. The village chief would not help them search for the person. Everyone knew that jumping from a hundred-meter-high sea cliff left no possibility of survival.
Everyone looked at each other, their faces filled with a hidden despair and emptiness. Their fate was like duckweed on water, unable to return to land.
………
Xin Hexue borrowed hot water to wash away his chaotic thoughts. He felt like he had grasped something, but the clue slipped away.
This led to a stifled depression in his chest that he couldn’t dispel.
Soon, he realized this wasn’t caused by depression.
His hand had merely brushed against his chest while using the towel, and he felt a swelling pain. Xin Hexue lowered his eyelashes. He raised his trembling hand and brought it close to his eyes to look.
His light pink index finger was stained with a bead of milky white liquid.
He turned around. His originally thin and flat chest, reflected in the mirror, showed a slightly protruding curve.
………
Xin Hexue walked quickly through the courtyard.
The white porcelain dolls stood on the red tiles. Smelling the scent belonging to ‘Mother”, the paper dolls became extremely restless. They abandoned their “parents” and began chasing Xin Hexue.
As a result, they were all soundly beaten by the crazy defender of the one-child policy, the only child, Xiao Hei, who wrestled them down as if in a fight.
Xiao Hei looked back and saw that Xin Hexue had already walked far away. It then went to chase after its mother’s heels.
“Mother… Mother…”
Xiao Hei ran too fast, its paper legs moving like a shadow puppet and leaving afterimages. But it ended up falling flat on its face.
It stubbornly got up, but did not receive the “good boy” praise as before.
Instead, a door slammed shut right in front of it, leaving Xiao Hei covered in dust.
“Xiao Hei?” Matsukawa opened the door from another room and stood in the corridor. He held up a fruit plate and beckoned to it, smiling as he asked, “Would you like to come to Uncle and play for a while?”
………
Xin Hexue stared coldly at Zhou Liao and locked the door.
[What’s wrong?]
Seeing his pale complexion, Zhou Liao stepped forward to ask with concern.
But Xin Hexue began unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time. His eyes were half-lowered, the long eyelashes tipped with a misty dampness and the lobes of his ears flushed like rosy clouds reflecting on snowy mountains.
Zhou Liao had already averted his face when he started unbuttoning the third button, his face bright red.
“Look!”
Xin Hexue commanded.
You wished you could shake the bed apart when we were intimate before. Why are you acting like an innocent virgin now?
When he finally turned his face around, Xin Hexue opened his shirt.
His originally thin, flat chest now had curves. They weren’t very obvious, but upon closer look, one could see a slight softness of breast tissue.
The bright red tips rose and fell with his breath, bearing shiny white traces, which were particularly alluring.
The young man, a new mother, clearly didn’t know how to handle this troublesome situation.
“It’s swollen.” Xin Hexue frowned. This was not like last time when it could be simply resolved. “What should I do?”
Zhou Liao’s head practically steamed like a steamboat.
[Why does the live stream go black as soon as clothes come off? I haven’t seen anything yet!]
[What is it that we, the little cat husbands, cannot see?]
[I know what comes next: swollen () / lick () / sit () / hug ()]
